Upon purchasing a locomotive from a manufacturer, the customer may customize the locomotive with supplemental third party systems installed by a third-party vendor in addition to those pre-existing locomotive systems installed by the locomotive manufacturer. Additionally, subsequent systems may be added in the near future, such as railroad systems to supplement operation of the locomotive. Such locomotive, railroad and third party systems may include individual displays which receive time-dependent diagnostic information from their respective systems.
During operation of the locomotive, the locomotive operator regularly travels between each locomotive and third party system to monitor each system's time-dependent diagnostic information on their respective display. In the event of a suspected malfunction of a locomotive and/or third party system, the third-party vendor travels between each locomotive and/or third party system to separately investigate their respective time-dependent diagnostic information, and frequently collaborates with the locomotive manufacturer before finally attempting to diagnose the source of the malfunction.
The time-dependent diagnostics from each of the locomotive, railroad and third party systems is currently not temporally synchronized to assess the effect of one system on another, such as during a system malfunction, for example. The inventors have recognized that it would be particularly helpful to provide temporal synchronization of each locomotive, railroad and third party system during operation and diagnosis of a system malfunction. Accordingly, the inventors have recognized there is a need to increase the efficiency in diagnosing such suspected malfunctions of locomotive, railroad and third party systems, and to minimize the need to travel between each system to diagnose the source of the malfunction after the occurrence of a malfunction. Additionally, each railroad and third party display of a locomotive includes a respective display. Accordingly, it would be advantageous, both in terms of cost and spatial efficiency, to provide a single display capable of selectively displaying the diagnostic information for each railroad and third party system.